[R] FrailtyHL package does not work

[Maria Helena Mourino Silva Nunes]

Dear all,

I want to describe the time interval between mammography screenings as a function of several clinical and demographic variables. For each woman (ID), I have multiple events and each event corresponds to the time interval between two consecutive mammography screenings. Also, women's data sets come from ten different primary health centres (PHC). I have data from 1995 up to 2013. I have 8828 women under study and each woman has at most 7 events (that is, 7 lines, where the last line is always a censured event because it corresponds to the date when the woman is lost to follow-up).

I tried to run the frailtyHL package in R:

frailtyHL(Surv(Time_2-Time_1,Event)~x+(1|ID)+(1|PHC),data=ficheiro.dados,RandDist="Normal",mord=1,dord=1,convergence=10^-4) 

where, x is a generic independent variable.

but it gave the following error:

Error: cannot allocate vector of size 1.5 Gb
In addition: Warning messages:
1: Reached total allocation of 8172Mb: see help(memory.size) 
2: Reached total allocation of 8172Mb: see help(memory.size) 
3: Reached total allocation of 8172Mb: see help(memory.size) 
4: Reached total allocation of 8172Mb: see help(memory.size) 

What can I do to deal with this problem?

Thanks, in advanced, for your help.

Best regards,
Helena Mouriño Nunes.